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China Needs Tougher Climate Targets

China will have to launch more ambitious renewable energy and non-fossil fuel targets, and ramp up efforts to enforce them to avoid missing global climate accord requirements, two government think tanks said on Monday. China’s capacity for renewable energy, including hydro, wind and solar, will significantly exceed Beijing’s own target set in the five-year plan to 2020, according to the report jointly issued by China National Renewable Energy Center and the Energy Research Institute of Academy of Macroeconomic Research, Reuters reported. The world’s top energy consumer pledged to install 340 gigawatts of hydropower capacity, 210 GW of wind energy and 110 GW of solar power by 2020 in the five-year plan. But to meet commitments agreed in 2015 in the Paris global pact to fight climate change, China should raise its target for non-fossil fuel to 26% of its total energy mix from a current target of 15% by 2020, the report said. China, the world’s second-largest economy, overtook the United States as the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in 2007.